What I Should Have Said
What I should have said
was I not
so full of shits and grins and giggles,
myself
and you, having pulled
the ring out of your pocket and
flung it at
me
in the front seat of your car, a ’76 lemon yellow Skylark
bought
from your brother for $500
and a prayer.
Flinging that box at me as easily
as every broken half-assed argument that hung
between us
like wet laundry in a cold wind, bitten off
in short chunks of
you never listen you can’t admit when you’re wrong don’t act like a baby oh
grow up.
But grown up in the front seat of that car,
startled by the glimmer, like the shine
I took to you fronting shelves in Aisle Two and selling
generic cigarettes to the bums off Church Street, running
register side by side
while our education fell
to the wayside, too young to say no
too young to know it or
admit it.
I should have seen it coming.
Bolted and ran. Slammed the door.
But no.
Slammed open their bedroom door at 12:15 AM –
midnight, the witching hour –
your parents blinking like cats in the dark,
knuckling glitter and What the hell? from their eyes.
You’re too young
you tell me now you should’ve said then
when the miles roll away between us and he hasn’t come home
again.
She told you then
in the same tone used to monitor
your first kiss outside Maria Albertini’s front door.
That baneful voice speaks to you
even today, and
I can’t exorcise it even 1,000 miles away.
I have adopted that roll.
Pick up your socks pay the bills wash your hands
leave me alone tonight.
What I should have said
repeats
everytime your selfish anger flares
at me like the tip of a hard smoked cigarette in the darkened
window of a night train I ride
again and again, winging like the geese
North,
bringing me far and
away
from you
every time I think about
what I should have said.
